Thomas Ash

But this won't do for someone putting forward an objective morality, as there needs to be a concept of ought which is more than axiomatic.

Rusting Car Bumper

You still are missing it. It doesn't matter what the process is other than accepting a general rule that the method is comprehensible. It's not a matter of what *I* personally think.

The consequences are still that they are two different questions. You aren't looking at the implication if one believes they aren't. If "Why be moral is a moral question, then one can justify ANY moral system because of the circularity.

That because you simply arent recognizing the incomprehensibility which results if you don't.

Your position basically allows any self justifying statement or set of statements.

Try this:
I can create a set of Moral Laws called DChicken's Laws.
It includes:
a set of statements which lists a bunch of "oughts",
a statement which claims its true, and
a statement which says that all people ought to believe this set of statements as true including this one and behave accordingly.

If "Why be moral" is a moral question, then to answer the question I go to DChicken's Laws and what does it say? (Understand that asking "Why be moral" is the same as asking "Why behave according to DChicken's Laws"?) Wow! Amazing! It says "all people ought to believe this set of statements as true including this one and behave accordingly."

"Why be Moral" cannot be a moral question. If it is, then any set of moral edicts can justify itself including contradictory ones.

DC

[pronoun edit]

DRFseven

OK, I guess I understand you better, now. Earlier, it seemed you were saying that you couldn't see someone thinking that some type of behavior was moral, yet not practicing it. Now, it seems more like you're just saying that someone accepting a certain practice as moral implies that s/he always considers it the right thing to do. I don't agree, but I understand you better.

What about those in the objective camp? It happens all the time, especially in the primary example of belief in an objective morality, theists and religious rules. Plenty of people don't see anything wrong with certain behaviors they regard as being condemned by God, yet they figure that it's God's business to decide what's right and wrong. Take jealousy, for example. They don't see anything wrong with being jealous, may even think they should be jealous (their mate's illicit lover, perhaps), or that jealousy is healthy. They're not a bit sorry for it, yet they accept the idea of objective right and wrong, as well as the idea that a god sets the rules. Another example is "turning the other cheek." A lot of people think of that one as a moral rule, but, in fact, think they should "fight back." Seems pretty muddled.

In the subjective camp are, of course, many who think the situation determines right and wrong; what's right for you may be wrong for me. So this is another example of how some people might not think they "ought" to do something that they construe as moral behavior in someone else.

As for my idea of moral behavior, I think it is any behavior we come to regard as moral. I have my own personal code that I have learned through experience, which seems right to me, just as you have yours. The more that our bodies of knowledge are alike, the more alike our moral beliefs will be. The reason for all the moral disagreement is that people end up knowing different and contradictory things, according to personal experience.

Thomas Ash

Well, could you humour me and tell me how you go about arriving at moral principles. It would help if I had a specific position to apply my argument to.
No, this doesn't work, and I'll show how. When you're put forward a set of moral laws (or principles, or whatever) as you were doing with DChicken's Laws, you first put forward a set of statements which comrpise those laws or principles. As part of these laws, if they are to be moral laws as opposed to physical laws or purely descriptive laws of sociology or whatever, you include the statement that they are what people ought and ought not to do. Ie. the laws start with phrase like "Thou shalt" or "Thou shalt not."
You then have to put forward a justification of why these laws are true. You can't just put this in with the set of laws. That's rather like a version of the ontological argument, where God's existence is sneaked in as a predicate. So prooving that DChicken's Laws are true is a separate step, outside the description of what they comprise. But if you do suceed, then the various moral laws in it are true, including all those statement that start "Thou shalt" or "Thou shalt not."

Primal

You are using the word "should" in two different senses here Tom. In one sense, morally obliged. In another, to indicate compelling motivation. The former does not automatically entail the latter.

idiom

Why does it have to be more than personal preference?

There can be an objective absolute morality but in itself does not bind any one to it.

Thomas Ash

I see what you mean, but I'd say that it does. The definition of a "moral obligation" would be something like "a commandment or principle, the following of which has greater 'value' than choosing not to follow it, and is thus the right choice."

Garbles18

Why not? Isn't that the definition of free will, the ability to choose your actions? The Christian religion is based on this idea. There is an objective morality but you have the free will to either follow it or not. The only way you would have to follow an objective morality is if you didn't have free will. Is this what you are arguing?

An example: I don't care whether a god exists or not. Either way I will not worship a god because my personal preference is not to worship anything.

In that example if I knew a god existed and decreed that worship is moral and non-worship is immoral, I would arbitrarily choose not to follow that law because it goes against my personal preference. You could argue that my choice is irrational, but not impossible if you believe in free will.

I think the answer to the OP has been answered several times in this thread: personal preference. No matter what someone's response was, it has boiled down to personal preference each time.

DRFseven

If there are principles that are objectively good, then they, by definition, must be different from personal preference, which is defined by subjectivity. If morality were a force such as gravity, it would be an objective thing. But it's not; it's a value judgement. We feel that behaviors, or principles of behavior, are good or bad.

Thomas Ash

I'm not saying you can't choose to disobey moral commands, etc. even if you think there is a morality - see my posts above. But I am saying that if you think there is a morality, you can't think that either doing or not doing what it commands in a particular situation is arbitrary. If you did, you wouldn't actually think there was a morality. The concept of morality involves thinking that there are differences of the value of certain actions, and that the choice between them isn't arbitrary. (Unless you subscribe to a purely pragmatic, self-interest/reciprocity-based morality, which I don't think really deserves that name )
Well, I do believe in free will, of a compatibilist determinist type.
A choice based purely on personal preference, with nothing else coming into the equation, isn't really morality.